Edition of 800 copies split 7 Record Store Day release from two of the most consistently wowing contemporary guitar slingers. Gunn’s side is a gorgeous meditation on American steel string modes that has a heady Fahey atmosphere while Ahmed’s is a little grainier and more downer/drone fixated, more focussed on the lonely aspect of his first two albums. 

New full-length album from the Chicago-based duo of Steven Hess and Michael Vallera: Cleared play monolithic drone/rock that crosses the cinematic aspect of Starving Weirdos/Ensemble Economique with a black cultic seam that draws on early Ash Ra/Amon Duul and the Silence-era giants. Using guitar, drums, percussion, electronics and tape/samples the duo move from thick, semi-static walls of modulated feedback w/isolated fog horn tones rising from the murk through full-on lumbering psych guitar nod-outs w/a dramatic Savage Republic edge that collapse into dark whorls of drone illuminated by percussive ritual workings and distant coronas of F/X that could almost be Salt Marie Celeste-era Nurse With Wound. It’s a great *sounding* record too and makes for an immersive headphone trip. Edition of 500 LPs in beautiful heavy gatefold sleeves. 

New studio album from the duo of Justin Wright and Matt Hill, a continuation of the Where Does Your Mind Go? sessions recorded at Black Dirt Studios. Less of a heady/devotional Popol Vuh vibe to this and more of a Swastika Girls/Fripp & Eno feel, with clipped, treated electric guitar bleeding after-images into oblivion while synths whir and pugilistic drum machines kick the whole thing into early-Heldon territory or even some of the recent Ashtray Navigations form. The high keyboard masses have the kind of cosmic grandeur of Nitch’s harmonium works, making this the perfect soundtrack to your next private ritual. Edition of 500 copies. 

There’s always been a weird sort of distant kinship between Ilyas Ahmed and Jandek, not necessarily something stylistic, but something hermetic, something indefinably lonesome. On the opening track of this stunning album Ahmed cements the deal with a forlorn setting of wordless vocalese that transmits exactly the same feel of enlightenment in – or despite of – oblivion as Jandek’s “Om” while being nestled in the kind of rural psychedelia of Flying Saucer Attack’s first LP.
All of Ahmed’s records feel like travelogues, journals, and as such they are all very different while remaining essentially the same – the same focus on blending dosed Americana with modal styles, the same blasted atmosphere - even as the guitar playing in particular has grown in confidence and so been able to support more emotional weight. It’s a nomadic music, in that Ahmed functions as a lightning rod for a buncha disparate sides – think Crazy Horse via Skip Spence via Tommy Roundtree – while drawing them all into his prodigious gravity. In much the same way his music has a retrospective appeal, as if he is soundtracking moments or mental scenarios that have already been lived through, memorials for certain moods and moments. That’s another quality that he shares with Jandek. In common with this his music is often inchoate, out of focus, once removed from linear concerns of song. Indeed, perhaps only Joshua’s Gold Cosmos has the revelatory power of With Endless Fire, despite never really settling on anything that could explicitly be termed ‘singer-songwriter’. Rather, With Endless Fire works in terms of sustained moods, with more in common with, say, Roy Harper’s Stormcock or Skip Spence’s Oar than anything to do with straightforward songsmanship. But the cumulative effect is hypnotic, with singing drones and an almost Gary Yoder (Oxford Circle/Kak/Blue Cheer) inflected fuzztone over endlessly deep string drones and the kind of sanctified acoustic guitar of the best of the late 60s UK folk privates propelled by head-nodding, boo-huffing hand percussion. This is the sound of nowhere, right now, tied up with all of the shadows that might suggest. A magical album, edition of 1000 copies with heavy Stoughton tip-on gatefold sleeves and a download. Highly recommended!